MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

MA Man is generally believed to be a weak nation, and... it is. Unlike Baalz's guides, this guide is not going to be about great synergies and exciting tricks, because by and large they don't exist. This guide will intend to be about maximising what Man is good at (= not much) and covering the holes in the nation.

* * *

Man benefits a lot from expansion. Grabbing territory quickly is good, as you'll need a lot of money to power your early game and a lot of gems to power your middle and late game. However, for various reasons (see far below) I don't recommend an SC pretender. Luckily, Man's army is mostly up to the task of good expansion against indies and many nations.

Basic battle tactics for Man for the early to midgame should be simple: longbowmen with a melee screen. Longbowmen have good precision (12), good range (35) and good missile damage (13), a decent bunch are quite capable of whittling down the enemy, if not routing them outright then leaving them in poor state for the melee screen to finish. Bear in mind both any shield larger than a buckler and heavy armour will severely dent the impact of your longbowmen. Your melee screen should preferentially be Tower Guard, which are good quality infantry. Axemen are pointless, there's nothing they do that Tower Guard don't do better. Longspears and Spearmen are okay if unexceptional: however, the same high protec troops that make your longbows less effective will also make these guys struggle. If your melee screen fails, Longbowmen themselves have reasonable Att/Def and a shortsword so they stand up better than many missile troops in melee, but with low protec (6) and no shield, they'll do a lot of dying. You should be able to outshoot virtually any other archers, except rare varieties with shields. It's also worth bearing in mind Man's armies are SLOW. Only longbowmen and Spearmen have mapmove 2.

You are not a good target for someone else's rush. Longbowmen can be amassed quickly in huge numbers: their missile fire poses a decent threat to many typical rush troops like elephants/mammoths, hydras and many blessed units. Even if a rusher thinks he can beat you, the risk of heavy casualties may persuade him to find an easier opponent. Cap-only Knights of Avalon and Wardens of Avalon have high damage, good morale and MR, and may pose a reasonable threat to some SC Pretenders early on, and if not spells like Sleep (110 fatigue, MR) and lightning bolt are easily researched and give you some traction against many. Also bear in mind a niche use for Knights of Avalon: they have a magical alicorn attack, which can ruin the day for ethereal and mistform troops and thugs.

There may be some traction in building knights. Ultimately, these guys are extremely hard to kill with missile fire or in melee by average troops, and pack out lots of damage. However, the cost (50 gold & 50 res) makes them a drag to recruit, and you can guarantee when the midgame comes around and Evo starts flying, they'll die just as fast as something far cheaper.

Wind Guide is an obvious spell to cast, and flaming arrows if you have an adequate fire mage handy. Other synergistic tactics are slowing your opponent down to increase exposure to your archers: swarm; tangle vines; even phantasmal warriors. Eventually, your opponents will get spells that make your longbows increasingly ineffective. Arrow Fend and Storm are the obvious ones, but the likes of mist and darkness will decrease accuracy, and protection buffs from E & N will also make longbows struggle as they do not do AP damage (unless you can cast flaming arrows). However, by this time you should be looking at casting Storm yourself anyway, to leverage your Air magic for Thunderstrikes and eventually Fog Warriors, with your longbowmen looking at being at least partially retired. Together with Nature's protective spells against elemental damage, mass protection, mass regeneration and so on you can potentially have a very tough army.

Man struggles for Evo damage. Nature is not good at it. Poison and sleep are short range and your troops are vulnerable as well. Most of your mages will be short of A3 for thunderstrikes, requiring boosters to lay down the smack, so you'll be looking mostly at unit buffs to get the best out of your army.

* * *

Magic

Your basic go-to mage is the mother of Avalon, who comes in three variants: N3 (25%), N2A1 (50%), N1A2 (25%). Although a bit expensive for a researcher at nearly 30gp recruit per res, she has several advantages. Firstly, she's sacred so at least the upkeep is low. Secondly, every one is a decent mage in a fight via N or A (with a thistle mace from Construction 4, you won't ever need a crone to cast the big Nature battlefield spells like mass regeneration, just a N3 mother). Finally, she's stealthy (+0), so she can move around unseen. Once you can cast Storm, the N1A2s can power up with Summon Storm Power and start flinging thunderstrikes. Arguably there's no real point taking Crones into battle until you get larger BF spells and item boosters to make best use of earth, water and air. In fact, you don't need to recruit many crones at all - mothers are perfectly adequate until some more heavy duty air magic is needed later on.

Crones. These are your high-power mages: Good N, moderate A, weak E/W possible, and arguably the worst highest-tier mages in the game. They are physically feeble. Ruinously, they have old age. Also ruinously, they have a mere 0.6% chance to luck onto A4, W2 or E2, which means essentially none will be happening. That means no A boosters (thus you missing on high level Air); no E boosters, and no W boosters until Construction 6 which is getting a bit too late. Never fear, if no useful indies or your pretender can rectify this, use empowerment, it's only 30 gems from 1-2. You might want to consider boosting a W/E indy without old age if you have one, and they'll do the site searching and forging. Boosting A3-4 is horribly expensive in gems, there are less wasteful ways to do it (see below). However, with the A boosters you're now in line for the elemental royalty, big Air rituals, and you can slap down Fog Warriors on the first turn without needing Storm/Summon Storm Power, which is one fewer turns for your entire force of low HP mages to be annihilated by rain of stones/earthquake/etc. A crone with E boosted to 2 by whatever means can summon earthpower and cast Rain of Stones and decent E units buffs herself. Man would benefit massively from the global Gift of Health, which can be easily cast, and preferably with a lot gems to keep it up. It'll both assist your frail mages and deal with some afflictions, and be a big bonus to your hard working troops, as your army will probably be doing a lot of hard work. Another note for ANW crones is that eventually W+N = clams for astral pearls.

The other big problem apart from their crappy ever-dying crones and lack of magical versatility in magic is absolutely no national Astral, Blood or Death. This can cripple you in the late game, to avoid it you'd need to chance upon some useful indies, and I recommend no-one leaves that sort of thing to chance, particularly because if it happens late, even by the time you get started you'll be far behind the curve. Your Pretender really should be making up for this deficit.

You get to recruit Daughters of Avalon at the capital. I don't see much point in their existence. I guess if you don't have the gold for a crone or it's late in the year and the thought of buying a crone who may get a nasty affliction a turn or two later is too depressing to contemplate, you don't want a Lord Warden, and for whatever reason don't want a mother (despite her being far superior except research cost effectiveness), knock yourself out. You certainly deserve to be knocked out.

Man has some really useful few "Song of..." national spells hiding away, three small radius AoEs accessible through N1: a healing spell, a morale-boosting spell and a fatigue reduction spell. All nice and good, but that fatigue reducer is great. Lay down the spell spam, and Oh look! Any old nature mage(s) can be sitting right behind them casting their fatigue away. Lovely.

With healthy N income and good research, Man should look at Mother Oak and Gift of Health as priorities. Mother Oak may be more important, as if you take Gift of Health and someone else takes Mother Oak, they'll get a N gem income sufficient to overpower your GoH pretty easily. Here, getting there first with fast research is again crucial.

* * *

Bless?

Man is not a good nation for blessed troops, it's simply not worth damaging scales and magical diversity to make a good combat bless. Wardens of Avalon are cap-only, unexceptional for the expense, and can be easily messed up by mid-level Evo. Lord Wardens cannot self-bless, do not have amazing stats, and have no other abilities but the bless you give them, so they're just not good thug quality. They are good ambidextrous, at best consider giving them a couple of cheap magic weapons and mix them in with other melee troops, they'll add a lot more oomph to the unit they're mixed with and the surrounding troops will offer some protection. They're also competing with your big mage, the Crone of Avalon, for recruitment at the capital. Your mages, however, are sacred. The only bless that looks particularly attractive for them is Earth, for reinvigoration. That said, you'll still need to cart round monks or your prophet to get your mages blessed.

* * *

Thugs/SCs

You don't have any. Okay, that's a bit harsh. With some boosters to Air, you can get the elemental royalty eventually. Nature will get you Sleepers, although they aren't that big an improvement on your Lord Wardens. Ivy Kings may suffice later on, but beware them having no Helm slot. You do have lots of N3 mages, so you have got the opportunity to Charm enemy thugs and SCs, particularly useful if your opponent has skimped on MR boosters. Not only that, but you've got N3A2, which means potential cloud trapezing charmers, so you could catch some thugs/SCs, although any opponent worth his salt will probably hammer that square with simple assassination spells and you would be saying goodbye to plenty of your charm brigade. Man has a number of national heroes which may turn up at your capital's gates, all of which from my experience have been extremely forgettable.

* * *

Infrastructure.

Man can do a lot with money, so your scales should be geared towards it. Except for on Farmland provinces (Fortified Cities), all Man's castles are 800gp and quick to build, so you have few problems rapidly hammering them out. Fortified Cities might need a high initial cost, but on a high income province you'll earn your money back very quickly, so don't discount them entirely. Also, Man's temples cost only 200gp, so it's very quick and easy to make plenty, you should think about doing this soon. You can use cheap temples two ways: firstly with high Dom to push your Dom rapidly, if at war maybe also making use of your stealthy H1 monks to undermine your enemy's Dom. Alternatively, take a low Dom to save design points and rely on extra temples to keep you competitive. Tower Guard get +1 defending in a siege, and Nature mages give supply. You can therefore potentially hold an army up for a long time besieging you without starving. If you can't save the castle, as your mothers are stealthy, they can hide, sneak off and fight another day when the end finally arrives.

Man's PD is... not good. They are least plentiful: you get 1 militia, spearmen and slinger per point. Not until 20+ do you get tower guard and longbowmen, but once you've got 20PD you're basically throwing good money away for little purpose on PD.

* * *

Stealth

MA Man is also sneaky. But unlike their quasi-forebears Tir na Nog and cousins Eriu, they're not very good at it - building a strategy around it is unlikely to work. Your only stealthy troops are Wardens, they are tough and destructive enough that small groups should defeat low to middling PD - crossbows are your biggest worry. Remember you can send stealthy H1 priests to bless them and add add magic support from your stealthy Mothers. You can often find other indy stealthy units, of course. Monks could potentially strip Dom from provinces to give you an advantage there, but I don't forsee that being a huge use.

The most potent weapon in your stealth arsenal are Bards. Massively stealthy (+30), they can cause unrest. Before starting a war with an opponent, you could send several of these over to their capital and raise unrest, ideally to 100+. Your opponent will not only have no income from their most valuable province but can't raise any units, especially his cap-only. Painful. Maybe kickstart the unrest with locust swarms as well, and if you've got enough bards, try shutting down some other key provinces too. It detracts from mage recruitment to make these guys, but hopefully you should have more castles and can dedicate one to pumping out stealthy units. Particularly early on you will really cripple your opponent early on if you shut down their capital. When not causing unrest, they can either scout or preferentially research. In battle, they'll be great for removing fatigue from your real mages with song spells.

Your national scouts, foresters, also have a patrol bonus: only 7, however. If you can't afford anything better in a fort think about it, but I don't think it's sufficiently advantageous to detract from building something more useful like Mothers otherwise.

* * *

Pretender design. Pretender design is particularly critical to MA Man. Unlike many nations, I don't think you don't have a lot of options available to you as you're so busy compensating for weaknesses.

Okay, we need money and we need to minimise crone loss, so Order-3 Growth-3 is a good start. We need to get some end-game magic available, so take D2 minimum. With various summons and boosters, that'll get you to D7 and tartarians eventually. Death can also get you thugs in the form of banelords and wraithlords readily. The other general advance would be getting astral going. A simple S4 will do this: Starshine Skullcap - Ring of Sorcery - Ring of Wizardry. RoW, incidentally, can be passed to an A3 crone so she can produce A4 Air boosters, and you shouldn't have many problems doing whatever you like with Air from then on. You don't need an SC pretender, because as previously discussed Man is not an easy rush target. After that, your pretender should expand your magical versaility as much as possible, that means a rainbow, and that means a human-sized one. Similarly, more magic paths means more chances of useful indy mage sites, further expanding versatility. I'd take the Great Enchantress: she's got your astral, the Earth is good to get your E going and access to crystal stuff, buying new paths is cheap and she gives you freebie astral pearls (and what's not to like about that?). Man's pretender is important for our development, and ideally should be awake.

You can make up points as follows. Drain scales actually wouldn't be too painful up to -2. Your basic mages, Mothers, get 5 research so it's only a 20% efficiency loss, better than many. You should have lots of gold and are planning to build castles and hence mages like crazy, so should have more than your opponents to balance the drain. You can forge some owl quills if you're really worried. Misfortune up to -2 might be also be a good idea: your order scales should cover some of the punishment. Cold/heat to -1 is viable, but no more as it's hurting your income (supplies are not a problem with nature mages). Sloth is also viable, but tower guard need 18 resources each, Wardens 28, and it's detracting from money again, so more than -1 might not be a good idea.

Using this basic template, we could have a minimal build awake Great Enchantress, F1W1D2E2S4, Dom-5, Order-3, Growth-3, and your choice of three scale point negatives into Sloth, Drain, Heat/Cold and Misfortune. Use heavy temple building to make up for lowish Dom, her job is to search sites (manually at first to get income going, spells later?) and then switch to construction, meanwhile she'll have a little pot of S pearls building away. The F/W magic can be exchanged for anything (E3, or 2 single paths in ABFNW), I just think FW gives more utility for forging, searching and summoning. With E2 she can create Earth Boots and Dwarven Hammers quickly, and crystal gear if you want it. Earth boots can be offloaded to E1 crones so they can site search earth. In the case of someone rushing you, the extra research may be a godsend for some extra spellpower. Your pretender may also provide a vital ace up your sleeve for crunch battles by supplying spell path alternatives your opponent may not be prepared for (eg. Flaming arrows). Boots of Flight and teleport give her plenty of manoueverability.

At your discretion you could have up to six negatives (Sloth 1, Cold 1, Misfortune 2, Drain 2). This gives you up to 120 points which can be used to boost magic versatility, maybe to acquire a light bless for your mages, or a stronger Dom. Getting your death and astral income going is particularly important, you'll be needing plenty of it ready for the mid and endgame, particularly considering development costs with forging and summoning your way to greater capability in both along the way. Consequently, increasing both paths may be a good idea to reduce such costs.

NB// Chrispedersen thinks it's better to improve scales by taking the extra points from a dormant pretender, read his comment below.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Agree with most of what you said.

But I disagree with taking a drain scale. If you take a moderately positive magic scale, and build castles like crazy, you can dispense with building crones until after you have researched construction for boots of youth. Rather build your cost efficient researchers:

Daughters are 80 for 6rp, mothers are around a sacred 130 for 8?.

So on a rp/gp ratio for upkeep you are talking around 1.1 and 1.6.

Spearmen *are* mapmove 2, along with your longbowman - so have slight utility in those cases you need to reinforce something quickly. Generally, the plan however is build a castle rather than move troops.

I do not believe that gems in the first year are a sufficient reason to keep your pretender awake. I would suggest better scales for more castle production.

Mother of Tuathas is an interesting choice as she significantly boosts your raiding potential. So is the arch druid a man specific choice.

But I think I would probably stick with a
E4D3S4N1B4 Dom3 crone.

D3 cuts the time/gems to get death in play, as no mound fiend is necessary. e4 for dwarven hammers and reinvig on your sacred casters. S4 for eventual entry to Astral. Blood 4 for booths of youth and entry into the blood school.

With ridiculously cheap monks, and cheap temples, man starting with a low dominion is in a better position than anyone but mictlan to control his dominion spread.

As written elsewhere growth + high taxes are your friend.

Finally: Alteration is your first research goal, for wind guide.
After consider alteration again for Oak, especially absent a pangaia player. Otherwise enchantment for flaming arrows, or construction

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Without a Pangaeia Change that to:

+3+2+3-1+3-2+1
F4E2D3S4N5

Cold rather than heat as with your priest spam and archers, abysia's armored troops are a bigger threat than ermor.

Go strait Alt 5. Cast wooden oak.
Next target: Enchant 5 for Gift of Health and flaming arrows.

MP prophetize the forrester, and turn 2 do not accompany the army rather preach to avoid the embarrassing "merchants prosper" loss of game. Dom 1 will be difficult But with man you have so many ways to lose. Beware an early Blood Sacrifice nation.

Your first turn production long bowmen with a screen.. Consider the bard / mother for first production. bard for the standard bonus. Consider having them accompany the army. In an archery duel your archers are doing 13 +d6 vs 4-6 prot short bow archers.
they will be doing 10+d6 vs 6 prot.

2xHealing songs will on average heal your archer to full.

F4 on your pretender isn't so much to cast flame arrows yourself: but you really need to find a fire indy site. F4 for flame boosters, and f/d flame skulls will let the average flame indy cast flame arrows.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

I've never had luck with Healing Song. Sure, it can heal your archers if they get hit, but for it to work you've got to have your (unarmored low hp) mage up among the people getting hit. The number of archers you save isn't worth the mages you lose. And that doesn't count the archers that just die from one hit (or lose an arm)

Soothing song is brilliant for big battles, though. It needs critical mass, but 4-5 bards casting it can keep a lot of mages going indefinitely. They'll default to it often enough even after the scripts run out.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

I do believe level 1 empowerment to 2 is 30 gems, not 20.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Soothing song *is* brilliant. Even 1 caster casting (as its aoe) makes a huge difference. Its like Reinvig on steroids.

On healing song.... Almost all of mans mothers have 1+ air. Simply script air shield.

Plus, the AoE is 10+ .. which is something like 14. Which is sufficiently larget that you can bracket your rear longbowmen with negligible chances of getting hit. In 20 battles I lost 1 mage - in a time the ai, for whatever reason neglected to cast air shield.


Against tough nuts, use swarm additionally.....although the computer will not cast it against pushovers.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

With neutral magic, Daughters are 80GP for 4 research, Mothers are 130GP for 5 research, so daughters are more cost efficient. This advantage would be enhanced with positive magic scales; however, it would be less advantageous with drain. If you took positive magic scales, I'd agree daughters would be a more attractive proposition.

On the other hand, a mother gets you a mage worth a damn in a fight. I agree there's no point buying crones early on, whole first year maybe (you could send out some E/W ones site searching). There's nothing they can cast early on that mothers can't, and you've better things to spend money on than crones. However, if an emergency arises early on and you need to pack the mages out, you do NOT want to be stuck with the limited capabilities of daughters, especially if your god hasn't woken up yet.

Funnily enough, I did initially include some pretender options similar to those you suggest (dormant with better scales, etc.) but removed them from the final version. I think the god will be very busy when it arrives forging and summoning, and there's a much greater risk that by the time it wakes up it has few or no gems of the right types (particularly Astral, Death) to do anything with, which will slow down development a lot. But I'd consider your suggestion very viable.

Tolkien - you're quite right, empowerment is 30 gems 1-2.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Don't get me wrong, I build only mothers. But I think daughters are viable.

As for forging: you're not going to forge the entire first year, if you head to Alt4 as we both think is correct. After that to make a case for an awake pretender you have to say ok: what am I going to forge in the first year thats makes con-4 better than Alt5, or Ench 4/5?

I don't see it, but I'm open to hear what you suggest. The best thing I can figure is Air boosters so you can morph into Caelum/formoria lite aka: storm, summon storm power, lightning spam... But you don't have a4 on your pretender anyway =)

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

I have a lot of comments, but I will try to limit myself a bit at least.


Man can do quite a lot with battle magic and a lot of is of the kind that interacts and combines well with national troops.

Lightning and poison are the obvious choices for damage spam, but in most cases your troops - with the help of a buff or 10 - can do just fine in the damage department. Do not forget such things as sleep and spamming panic and false horrors. Charm has been mentioned as have buffs, but the last part is very - not to say extremely - important to man.

All your mages can cast protection, use it. Get access to earth so that you can use stone- or ironskin when an opponent brings too much fire damage to the table. As the game goes on, start piling buffs on your troops. Knights are great in the beginning game and with buffs they keep on being absolutely fantastic - quickened, foggy, protected, giant-strength knights with weapons of sharpness never go out of style. Knights do die almost as easily to damage spells as any other troops, but that does not mean that you should stop producing them. Buff them with gift of flight or, in a pinch, haste. Knights are offensive units and should be used as such. Once they are mixed in with enemy they are harder to take out and - most important of all - they get to smack them around. They are expensive, but you have a very solid income and cheap and sacred mages - troops and castles are for what it is used.

Not using knights cripples Man.


It is important to realise that one of Man's strength is that it can field a lot of armies that need an effort to get rid of. Of course, a reasonably large and dedicated opposing army will squash it, but that demands resources. A nation with plenty of decent air mages will not have as much trouble, but one relying on its pretender or expensive summons to cast storm or arrow fend to lessen the impact of your longbowmen will have problems.

The other obvious answer to longbowmen are heavy infantry with shields, but that has drawbacks that Man can exploit as well. Obviously, lightning spam can be used to great effect here (orb lightning works particularly well against human sized troops), but knights and some magic for slightly larger battles works very well, too. Knights are just as protected as other heavy infantry, but with relatively low encumbrance. Work the difference by casting curse of stones on your enemies and relief on your own troops. Add in regeneration to add to your staying power and weapons of sharpness to detract from that of your opponent. In practice you have to limit yourself to what you have actually researched, of course, but at least curse of stones is a guarantee.



I also want to add something about bards. They are not only massively stealthy (+30 , not +25 to be precise), they also have leadership 10. This makes bards the preferred ferrier of wardens as they are much harder to detect than your other stealthy commanders. This makes them almost perfect body guards for a cloud trapezing crone. The bard can throw a quick protection or two on the wardens and then concentrate on keeping everyone's hp high and fatigue low. The wardens kill anything getting close to the crone and the crone does the rest.


Finally, about the pretender I strongly recommend taking A4 and at least E2 - preferably E3. Waiting until construction 6 for the ability to craft air boosters can hurt quite a bit. Without at least E2 you will in all probability have to empower a E1 crone or independent mage and that is 30 gems that you need - earth is vital for man. Eventually you will want a couple of troll kings to cover earth casting. With E3 you can craft a hammer as soon as you get the gems and as a bonus you then have easy access to elemental staffs. This in turn facilitates serious water access through naiads - and opens up for clams.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

I second that. I'd take Productivity 3 (actually I do in a little game at the moment) and recruit following "as many knights as possible, then fill up with longbowman".

That means the god has to start sleeping but you can live with that.

For magic, swarm is a great spell. And don't let anyone tell you, your thunder strikes are not good, because you spend air gems to cast them.

Overall, Man is a fun nation to play, allthough not among the top nations (or near the top nations. Still better then MA Agartha, though. ;))

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Completely disagree. Knights are eye candy and way too hard to mass.

Even if you *do* buy Prod+3 - you're better off buying more longbowmen.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

You have mothers. Take a minor nature bless and a strongish earth bless. The AAN mothers should do Mistform, Barkskin, Resist Lightning, hold, attack, cast spells. With shrouds and a vine shield, they become cloud trapezing thugs who kill people with shockwave. Drop one in every enemy provice the first turn of the war, take the province, stealth off into safety and watch the enemy cry for their mommy.

That bless is also good for your crones, who get larger than normal regen due to their strong nature paths. It will keep them alive and, I think, unafflicted for longer.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Hmm, interesting mother strategy. Sounds alot like Eriu or Tir'Na'Nog's Tuatha/Sidhe Lord thuggery.

As for the crones, they will be if you slap on shrouds. They don't start blessed, so it doesn't help.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

If we are talking expansion into independent provinces that is essentially correct - knights are mostly overkill for this. Otherwise not so much.

You do not need to have production 3 to amass a very decent number of knights. Man should build castles practically everywhere and all of them can produce knights.

Also, mostly it is not really a question of massing them. You want a decent number of them, but you certainly want other troops as well.

Longbowmen are very nice but if you rely solely on them for damage any human opponent will squash you with little problem.

In year two you should be able to field at least a couple of armies each turn with, say, 10 knights and 30 longbowmen lead by a mother. This will squash practically any PD and be a lot harder to deal with than the same army with 10 towerguards instead of knights. A very small number of decently armoured shield bearing eliteish infantry will otherwise make the atrition on your armies very high, which means it is a very cheap way for your enemy to slow or stop your advance.

Shields and armour are mundane problems for longbowmen that human opponents will not be late to utilize. A lot of nations can also field relatively cheap mages that can buff the natural protection of their troops - Man is not alone in this.

Man needs another way for their troops to deal damage and knights are good at this. With their two attacks of 18 and 10 damage they have a very decent damage outlay and their good defence, low encumbrance and high morale make them quite resilient.

I toyed around with this some time ago but could not get it to work very reliably. Losing some mothers here and there was not much of a problem, but getting enough astral gems for the shrouds was. If I pursued shrouds in exclusion of anything else done with astral pearls I could usually scrape together enough for a decent amount of them and since it was in SP it worked at least ok, but in MP I cannot imagine anything else than being seen as a giant shooting gallery for mindhunts.

The bless was also expensive enough that I needed the mothers to work very well to make up for my lack in other areas.

Any tips?

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

I don't think taking a strong bless for mothers is good. The idea has merits I admit but it has two glaring drawbacks:
1. As mentioned by Amorphous. MH would annihilate your mothers thus shutting off that strat. I recently finished an MP game playing as MA Man (and Ctis). I lost *so* many mothers to MH that I stopped counting. I mitigated the problem by giving them MR boosters at times and by accompanying them with cheap monks and scouts. Still - the mother's attrition rate was extremely high.

Perhaps E9S9 bless would work but then you compound the 2nd drawback:

2. Strong bless always comes at the expense of something else. In this case it will come on the expanse of magical diversity on pretender and/or good scales. Either of those will cripple Man immensely.

Besides for a non-astral nation you'd have a hell of hard time forging shrouds early enough and fast enough.
Take a moderate bless if any. Strong bless for Man is not advised since you need to cover glaring weaknesses and thus can't afford one.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Mindhunt is the major weakness with using mothers for thugging. You can use AMA, but it does cost more S gems. I tend to find enough, but I could just be getting lucky.

I would do something like Dormant Great Enchantress N4S4E6. You can still get pretty good scales with that. When she wakes up, send her site searching. Forge a booster for a lizard shaman and have it start searching with arcane probing.

Another way to do mother thugs is to skip the bless and go for pure nature items. Boots of the Messenger, AMA and a Regen Ring. It costs more gems total, but it uses mostly nature gems which you should have enough of. Mother Oak may be an option, if you can get alteration researched quick enough.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Mothers have a sufficiently low MR that there's not much justification spending gems giving them more against mind hunt, they'll still be very likely to fail. Fill the provinces they attack with cheap scouts beforehand, they should act as chaff to distract. Without a bless, you're also spending an extra 10N gems (assuming a dwarven hammer, 15 otherwise) on messenger boots and regen, on top of 7 (10) for the vine shield. That's not cheap for such a frail unit, but in general terms, N1A2 Mothers can make it as thugs.

And Lizard Shamans can only site search astral if you find any lizard shamans to recruit. I've played quite enough games where I could barely scrape together certain types of gems, never mind indy mages with the right paths.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

If you find lizard shamans forge flying boots and let the shamans fly into the provinces that your crones attack - but only those that your enemy can't see.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Mothers as shockwave thugs is a good idea, but it depends on whom you are fighting and when. The critical spells that make a shockwave thug viable - mistform, barkskin, personal regen, constr 2-4 for a vine shield - are considerably lower in research than Mind Hunt and Soul Slay. So there is a window of opportunity for this tactic. In fact, these look a lot like EA Arco's Oreiad thugs, except that they are half the cost and not cap-only. (though the limiting factor will be forging equipment anyway). Or, you might be fighting an opponent with no Astral, in which case no MH to worry about. Like many things, it is a side strategy to pull out when appropriate. Though I would be concerned about the Mothers' lack of a means to fend off handfuls of regular troops: relying on the Vine Shield alone may not be good enough.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

A lot like EA Arco's Oreiad, except more fragile, without Awe and not self blessing. You can try naked Oreiads against indies as soon as you get Shock-wave. Try that with Mothers.

There may be a niche for it, but it's a slim one.

And Personal Regen is not advised, unless you've got a lot more Nature. It's 40 fatigue.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

"Massed" Mothers of Avalon are quite powerful without equipment. The problem is that you have to sacrifice research to use them in combat. They spam buffs, lightning bolts, soothing song (to keep themselves firing continuously), and breath of the dragon depending on type. A mix of them makes for a good attack force--mix them in with the longbowmen who act as their screen.

I use bards extensively. At least one of my many castles produces one a turn. I insert them into enemy lands just to watch in provinces that are not going to be heavily patrolled adjacent to castles. Then, whenever I'm ready to go, swarm them onto the castles and Incite. 5 Bards can shut down the enemy capitol in 1-2 turns and can remain hidden even under relatively aggressive patrols.

As for the Knights/KoA, they have a tendency to create money problems. I like the long spearmen and tower guards. I love the KoA, and hire lots of them. Rejuvenation means that when you get injured ones, you can pull out the wounded ones ("w" hotkey in army setup) and let them recover--operating as guards until they're better. I use the N3s to summon.

Foresters: They have 12 Precision. I put magic bows on them and add them to my armies set on Fire Rearmost to take out back-line mages. Vision's Foes and BBOB can easily take out SCs with extremely cheap units.

Crones: You can recruit them early on. When they get diseased, stick a Lycanthropos' Amulet on them. Easier to get in Man than Boots of Youth when you don't have a blood economy. The other option is Elixir of Life. Both options are more expensive than Boots of Youth, granted, but using scouts or indie commanders to hunt blood slaves takes forever and it's kind of a waste of time to hunt slaves for boots with your pretender. If you're making a crone a turn, you won't be able to handle the necessary output without tying down your pretender until you empower someone which probably won't be efficient until after you start making dousing rods.

By the time you add up all of the ramp-up time, you've been avoiding your best mages for a very long time just because they don't pop out immortal. In Abysia, 90% of your mages are always old even the little ones, but that won't stop you from hiring them. Not hiring crones because you don't have boots of youth is a bad idea.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Soothing Song is really nice for large battles. I used bards to spam it, since they have less other options once the script runs out.
Crones can Thunderstrike pretty much indefinitely if they've got bard backup. Better (for fatigue) than communion slaves. Good for quick recovery after dropping the big battlefield buffs too. Fog Warriors this round, Thunderstrike the next.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Just because I enjoy being pedantic, Oreiads are not self-blessing either. In both cases, you can use a Shroud of the Battle Saint. Or forget the bless and just use Rainbow Armor, which I think is a couple more points of protection: 3air,3nature gems vs 3astral. Both Man and Arco have Air & Nature aplenty, though Air gems are always precious, and it depends on what bless you get with your shroud.

Anyway, I agree that it is a very niche strategy, but it seems like MA Man has a remarkably narrow range of things it can do, so diversifying your bag of tricks by any means available is worth considering.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

I also wanted to mention... I don't have much use for monks in terms of stealth preaching since they're only H1. That means 30% - 5%/candle which means that they cannot harm any dominion 6 candles or stronger and are abysmal against even small dominions..

They are, however, stealthy and can be used to bless Wardens in the field if your pretender is set up for a bless.

Now, I will say this...

Man can use a bless strategy. Wardens are not their only blessable unit. Cu Sidhe and Barghests are also sacred and can be easily massed. The former can be summoned by most Mothers of Avalon and the latter by staff-wielding revenants summoned by your pretender. Both are quite nice and Cu Sidhe, being summoned with nature gems, are easy to mass especially since Man can take the Mother Oak very early in the game provided Oceania or Pangaea is not involved. This, in fact, is going to be the subject of my next Man experiment...

Man... Blessed?

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

And in CBM Wardens and Lord Wardens are recruit everywhere. So definitely blessable there.

I'm not sure about with just capital Wardens and the summons. They might be to few and too late.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Really? I've been playing CBM for a long time now, but I never thought the Wardens were recruitable everywhere.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Well, Barghests are stealthy, so they can be combined with Warden forces. The cap-only Lord Warden is ambidextrous, so he can use double brands as an option, but coming from the capitol is bad since I want crones.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Playing man with an earth (and possibly nature) blessing is very strong, and the only way to play man as far as I'm concerned.

It essentially gives man a huge (and fun) stealthy, recruitable, thug army.

Personally I think man is much stronger than people give credit for. I know that people consider man one of the weak nations in MA, I rate it about 3rd.

The elements for success, afaiac is: stealthy lords and wardens with blesses. Stealthy priests. Stealthy bards for incite etc.
And *lots* of castles.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

I just checked, and Lord Warden is definitely not cap-only. Still, I wouldn't give him double brands.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

That's a CBM change, in case anyone's referencing this for vanilla.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Wait, sane people still play vanilla?

Man is pretty decent up until about turn 40 in CBM.

But in vanilla? Useless. All the units that are any good are too expensive to do anything with (resource-wise: no, you won't win with just longbows). Which means not only do you have no lategame, you also have no early or middle game.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Yes, wardens not capital-only is CBM change. I think it's poor thematically, but it makes Man much stronger by allowing a good bless strategy. IIRC, it also makes a Warden Lord a weak priest - so able to self-bless.
As for raiding sacreds - Cu Sidhe are also stealthy. ;)

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

How is it unthematic? Fluffwise, Wardens serve as bodyguards for Mothers of Avalon. Mothers are recruit everywhere. Therefore, Wardens should be recruit everywhere, because wherever there's a mother there should be a warden.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Fluffwise, Wardens are made by enchanting promising warriors with some ancient Tuatha-originated magic to make them even better. And it is done in Forest of Avalon;) , where Avalon Witches have their main center.
I would think about some ritual spell(s) which would be castable by Crone only but would either summon some Wardens or, still better, turn existing troops into them. ;)
What is worse, I think, and more easily fixed is that Wardens are map-move 1.
And, by the way, of course I am insane. :p

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Also, fluffwise all Mothers and Crones start out as Daughters, trained in Avalon. Since, not only is there no mechanism for Daughters becoming Mothers or Mothers becoming Crones, but Mothers are recruitable anywhere, there must be a reservoir of Mothers, formerly trained at Avalon roaming throughout the land, but not attached to your military. These are the ones you recruit. Obviously these Mothers have Wardens to guard them, also previously enchanted in Avalon. Those are the ones you can recruit.

Sometimes it doesn't pay to look too closely into the assumptions behind the game.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Yes, Daughters problem bothers me more. ;) It would be good to have a procedure for making them into Mothers & Mothers into Crones. And, of course, a problem of weak capital-only mage, too (returning to actual purpose of the guide).

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

But that problem (Daughters->Mothers-Crones) is widespread. Many nations have similar progressions, though usually only 2 steps. Warlock Apprentice->Warlock,
Augur->Augur Elder, etc. Ermor can recruit Triari, aged veteran troops.

A mechanic for changing unit type with experience or age would be interesting, but it would be a drastic change, probably best saved for Dom4. :)

It's just part of the basic assumptions of the game. You can recruit units at various stages of training. Like many things, it doesn't make sense if you look at it too closely, but it works fine as a game. So fix the things that don't work.

I actually like the idea of a weak, but cost effective capital-only mage. If only the strong mage wasn't also capital only, so you'd actually bother to recruit Daughters.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Why does it help them?

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

It regenerates them, preventing disease from killing them. When I had originally been trying this (and I believe there is a subsequent post about it), I was under the erroneous assumption that the amulet removed the disease affliction when it changed their form and "fixed" the old age problem. It does not--when I did the first test I forgot I had cast "Gift of Health" which was responsible for the disappearance of the disease.

The Lycanthropos Amulet does increase her basic hit points, but she can never fill those HPs without entering combat to receive a healing spell and if she does so, she will berserk which means she'll probably die. Therefore it is probably better to make Rings of Regeneration for them.

I try to get Elixirs of Life on my good crones as soon as possible. This is difficult because it either eats up Pretender turns or requires empowering someone.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

do they go berserk when get healed?

the elixir just saves them once, right? i mean they still remain old.

so a minor nature bless does everything the amulet or the ring does (the important parts)?

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

The Ring, (or the Amulet, after they change) prevents them from losing hp every month once they're diseased and they regenerate up to full if they survive battle.

The bless requires you to send them into battle to heal, or to forge Shrouds so the bless applies outside of combat. With no native Astral access and likely better Nature income, Rings of Regen might be easier and effectively cheaper. And doesn't require you to take Nature, which you have plenty of on your pretender. (

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

After you manage to research to Alt7 it becomes much more cost-effective to use the spell Transformation on the crones.

It eliminates upkeep and some of the transformed forms are usefull in combat, specialy if you cast regen before engaging...

As Alteration should be a priority for Man, it is not too hard to reach Alt7 somewhat early.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Elixir does the same thing boots of youth do, eg. freeze aging (they have the same effect tag), although you need to equip this before you get diseased from old age. The 2nd life effect is a seperate effect on the elixir.

From what I understand burden of time bypasses boots of youth, and therefore by extension probably bypasses elixir too, take this as an educated guess though.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

Here it isn't (so much of) a problem - as you yourself pointed out. It doesn't get added to the problem of Daughter being useful almost only as researcher while being capital only. In most other cases mage apprentice is hire-anywhere so it looks fine both from thematic (we all see many cases where there are many lesser education centers throughout the country with a big one at the center who teaches at a higher level) and gameplay point of view. But in Man's case it's stated that Witches' education is done only at the Forest of Avalon. And here, as you point yourself, both Daughters and Crones are recruited... :( I more or less understand this thematically, but it just seems awkward.

Re: MA Man - Making the best of a bad deal
 

I've done a decent amount of testing, and while boots of youth may be negated by burden of time; healing (like the fairy queen) units are not. In a MP game I had the chalice and GoH control, so I casted BoT. It turned out that my mages outside my capital (where the chalice was) were dieing too quickly, so I summoned some fairy queens and did some healing, which worked fine. I'm not 100%, but even with GoH and the Chalice, my capital may have needed a fairy-queen or two as well.

Obviously, this isn't much of a strategy to use 95% of the time, but I had good gem control and I had seen that they took the death scale, so I wanted to crush their economy and kill some mages...I ended up winning the game, so meh.